Homicide and the SSRI Drugs Alibi

What kind of a person would murder their own children? A sociopath, right? A deranged menace to society who deserves to be removed from society for life.

What if I told you that this person could be you, just one psychiatric medication prescription away from who you are today.

With a bottle of Seroquel nearby, Sofya Tsygankova, was found at the scene of her own children’s violent murder in Texas today. There is an untold story of the vast and irreversible risks of psychotropic drugs, doled out to millions, without any rigorous diagnostic procedure, any screening for risk vulnerabilities, or any true informed consent about what is known around the amplified benefits and the suppressed risks of these interventions.

We have been told a story about mental illness – that it is a likely heritable disease that strikes at some point in a patient’s life, never to be undone, requiring permanent medication treatment.

The truth is that what we are calling mental illness – from panic attacks to depression to psychosis – are symptoms of mismatch with lifestyle. These symptoms can result from physiologic imbalances (think thyroid or food intolerances), psychospiritual imbalances (think overwhelming job or abusive marriage) and are modern day syndromes that essentially invite us to revisit our day-to-day lives.

Psychiatric drugs have been exposed for their inflated claims as far as outcomes go. They don’t work the way we have been led to believe they do. They are chemicals that are habit forming, and have unpredictable risks. In fact, it is a Russian Roulette as far as the data shows, for severe and irreversible adverse effects.

One 2011 study by Lucire and Crotty examined 10 patients with variants in a drug metabolizing liver enzymes who committed homicide (primarily of children and family members) after being started on psychiatric medications. They returned to their baseline personalities after medication discontinuation highlighting the intoxication effects of these chemicals. One of these cases should have led to the ban of the entire class of medications. Unfortunately, not much has been done with this information and you probably haven’t heard a whisper about this particular paper.

You may not know that there is also a database called SSRIstories.org where these media-making cases of SSRI-induced violence and impulsivity are documented including school shootings, kamikaze plane crashes, and infanticide. You might think this is rare. You might think that these people are “mentally ill” so obviously they are on medication. The truth is that pharmaceutical companies have been working overtime to suppress a signal of harm around suicidality and violence with these psychiatric medications – coding negative outcomes in short-term trials as “emotional lability”, punting those cases to the placebo group, and otherwise discounting impulsive violence that populates the treatment arms of drug trials.

Part of the reason that you may be surprised to learn about this dark underbelly to psychiatric medication treatment is because you’ve been kept in the dark.When Andrew Thibault began to research the safety of a stimulant drug recommended to his son, he entered a rabbit hole he has yet to emerge from. After literally teaching himself code to decrypt the data on the FDA Adverse Event Reporting System website, he was able to cull 2000 pediatric fatalities from psychotropic medications, and 700 homicides. A Freedom of Information Act and a lawsuit later, he continues to struggle with redacted and suppressed information around 24 homicides directly connected to the use of psychotropics including the homicide by a 10 year old treated with Vyvanse of an infant. Another case, ultimately recovered, involved statements from a 35 year old perpetrator/patient, who murdered her own daughter, as directly implicating as “When I took nortriptyline, I immediately wanted to kill myself. I’d never had thoughts like that before”.

Sometimes, when we are working with a blunt instrument, in the form of a psychotropic medication, doing something is far more dangerous than doing nothing. Robert Whitaker has demonstrated this in his analysis of long-term exposure to psychiatric medication resulting in unequivocally worse outcomes than no treatment at all.

It’s time to start taking these medications seriously and seeing them for the brain and body-altering chemicals they are.

Until we know more about whose life might be irreversibly and irrevocably altered by even a single dose of psychiatric medication, we must honor the physician’s oath to first do no harm. This looks like asking why a patient is struggling and entering with support and lifestyle changes that can offer relief within days to weeks – all without a single side effect.

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Kelly Brogan, MD

Kelly Brogan, M.D. is a Manhattan-based holistic women’s health psychiatrist, author of the New York Times bestselling book, A Mind of Your Own, and co-editor of the landmark textbook, Integrative Therapies for Depression. She completed her psychiatric training and fellowship at NYU Medical Center after graduating from Cornell University Medical College, and has a B.S. from MIT in Systems Neuroscience. View full bio.
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Comments

Someone very close to me was put on seroquel and within days tried to kill himself… That says it all. Every doctor and hospital in my town (Vancouver, Canada) recommends this drug to people who have trouble with calming their brain. If you tell a doctor that you are very anxious, he/she usually will put you on seroquel. Very standard treatment here in Canada (BC). Also, used frequently for patients with addiction issues entering a detox program Yikes!

I found a really good herbal concoction, called ‘Stress Free’ by Planetary Formulas (Michael Tierra) that helps to calm anxiety and reduce stress. The first time I used it I was deep into depression and couldn’t stop crying. I felt nothing after I took it, expecting the usual abrupt change that drugs cause, and thought to myself, “this doesn’t work.” Years later I tried again and discovered that its effects are very subtle because it blunts the sharp edge of distress. I still felt depressed, sad and in pain, but not quite so severely. I did not feel like crying. It doesn’t “cure” you, but just removes some of the really painful parts of the feelings. Since getting older, I just don’t go through the depression I did when I first left home, where most of my siblings hated me and discovered that most other people would not treat me so badly. My depression originated from the realization that I would still have to return to that hatred for holidays until I reached a fully independent life. Once I had a job and could resist going home for the holidays, my depression evaporated.

My mom’s doctor, who specialized in senior care and was widely acclaimed in that field, put my mom on this drug, among many other mind-altering drugs. The drugs made my mom completely crazy. My mom was 83 and blind, with dementia. I was her advocate. I didn’t know what was happening. I trusted the doctor. The doctor switched my moms drugs about every 6 months. What I didn’t know was that many of the drugs had a 6 month half life and were still in her system when new drugs were introduced. My mom’s body was a toxic chemical dump. The last few years of her life were hell. I learned my lesson at my moms expense. Because of my experience with my mom, my mother-in-law, who has had dementia for the past 5 years, will never be given any of these drugs EVER! I believe that giving seniors these drugs is elder abuse, plain and simple.

I ended up in the hospital, where they decided to diagnose me as bipolar & give me Olanzapine Zyprexa…

Later, when bloodwork was done, they decided I was hypothyroid, & prescribed Thyroxine…

I am not bipolar, nor do I have a sluggish thyroid…

The event with my husband used up all my Iron stores, which tends to make me a little kooky…

An Iron supplement & eating more food corrects this for me…

The Olanzapine Zyprexa of course caused my bloodwork to say I was Hypothyroid…

The drug slows down your Thyroid…

Of course, when they gave me the thyroxine, it gave me instant insomnia, & causes manic symptoms…

The combo of the downer (zeprexa) & the upper (zyprexa) , was enough to confuse my system, & screw me up further…

When I exited the hospital, I stopped both drugs…

When I questioned the psychiatrist about how could I possibly be bipolar & hypothyroid, she said there were paradoxical cases…

I do tend towards being Iron anemic, but of course that didn’t show up in their bloodwork because I have been correcting it with supplements…

That my problem was event related was ignored…

The intent to diagnose me with some long term biochemical disorder led me to discontinue follow-up treatment…

My driver’s licence was suspended due to the psychiatrist’s singular opinion…Unlike Dr. Daniel Amen who actually diagnoses based on real diagnostic imaging of the brain (Spect scans), it appears that psychiatrists can decided on long term stigmatic labels based on their own guesses…

What is worse is that their guesswork has now taken away my right to drive a motor vehicle…

I have settled with my husband, & am fine…

Shocked that I avoided a long term label of bipolar, a lifetime of Olanzapine Zyprexa & Thyroxine…

Wondering how I can prove to the Ministry of Transportation that I am normal & healthy?

There does not seem to be a way to disprove a stigmatic label given by a psychiatrist?

The pseudoscience known as “biopsychiatry” is in fact a DRUG RACKET – designed solely to $ell drug$ for the pharmacuetical INDUSTRY. It’s even worse than Dr. Brogan says here. The 300+ bogus “diagnoses”
in the DSM-5 were all INVENTED to serve as excuses top sell drugs. We’ve been lied to. Yes, sometimes, some people do seem to do better, for some usually short length of time, on some low dose of some drugs….. But, long-term use of multiple psych drugs ALWAYS results in bad outcomes. Thank-you, Dr. Brogan.

What I find more interesting and revealing is that people willingly take these drugs and trust their doctors to harm them ? I am not at all shocked that so many reply when they have willingly done this to themselves out of ignorance ! This has all been known for a very long time and nothing new at all. We are all responsible for our own health and well being and that has not changed, nor will it !

Thank you, Dr. Brogan, for your continued willingness to speak out, including against your colleagues.

This drugging of Americans must stop. Drugs are not the answer, and they are not health-inducing.

We must stop allowing ourselves to be poisoned from every angle, via: vaccinations, prescription drugs, pesticides, glyphosate, fluoridated water, genetically modified foods, meat from poisoned and sickly animals living in deplorable conditions, toxic cleaners, flame retardants on our furniture and clothing, and on and on the list goes.

To think that these toxic exposures have been government approved, supported by our tax dollars, is infuriating. The health of Americans is abominable, and it is no surprise. It is next to impossible to experience good health when everything we need to survive has been tainted to the point of being toxic.

However, we must do all that is within our power to try to stop and reverse this poisoning of the people. We must all vote with our dollars every single day, and educate as many as we can every single day to do the same.

I also want to mention that I am a little past the halfway point of your book “A Mind of Your Own”. It is excellent! For those of you reading this who have yet to purchase Dr. Brogan’s new book, stop what you are doing, and order at least two! One for yourself, and one to share with a friend or to donate to your local library. Education of the populace is key. The solutions will not be coming from those in positions of power, rather, they will be from a rebellion by the people.

When I was on “heroic” doses of Haldol and Stellazine (actually villainous doses) I kept having mini-seizures. During these seizures I would have violent, murderous impulses I had to fight to suppress. All the psychiatrist would say is “That shouldn’t happen,” as though the reaction were my fault! They told me I would have to take them all my life or the symptoms would worsen.
The fact is the symptoms went away entirely when I was taken off those “anti-psychotics” that only caused me to become psychotic and seize!

Dear miss brogan. Thank you for your time and effort to get the word out. I am in withdrawal from cymbalta and it’s because of people like you and Peter gøtzsche and Peter breggin that I stand tall when I talk with my doctor. They don’t see the dangers with these drugs. I would have been lost if the group cymbalta hurts worse on facebook weren’t there. Maybe one day you can visit this group and see all the people who are hurting from the drugs. I know you would more then welcome. There are almost 6000 members now and still rising. One day I hope to translate some of your articles to danish.

It should be noted that it is rare for people with mental illnesses to kill other people. The risk is higher for suicide. A person with mental illness may be more likely to be the victim of a crime.

Though, there have been rare cases of medicine having terrible adverse affects. I wonder if some of the dog attacks could have been caused by animals on medication. Dogs often are put on the same psychiatric drugs as humans.

I hope you act as an expert witness for the victims of this massive fraud in courts of law, Dr. Brogan. The manner in which you are able to expose the misinformation is exactly what Judges need to hear. Medical malpractice cases are fought and won by medical expert witness’s whose job it is to educate Judges about the facts. I have done what I could to put these facts on the legal record but the very nature of the problem robs us of our right to speak the truth that no one really wants to hear.

Victims open these doors in the hope that fact based conversations about public health and safety change the laws. Misinformed Judges prepetutating harm and unwittingly sentence people to disability and death because the doctors who do speak, by and large spew fraudulent industry rheteric that maintains the status quo.

Please consider filing a open letter affidavit that those of us who actually manage to get into court can provide to the Judge for consideration; perhaps a power-point presentation that a jury can watch. Without Doctors like you willing to speak these inconvenient truths in courts of law, change will be slow and lives will continue to be lost for no just reason.

I invite you to speak on behalf of the public health and safety at my trial.

All what you describe here is done on purpose, dear Kelly. I am saying that majority of doctors do it unwittingly, they act in good faith believing that they are helping their patients. Agenda 21 is an invention of some deranged maniacs of conspiratorial theories.

Taking advantage of your own confessions in your blogs and webinars, let me remember you that you at the beginning of your practice acted in the same way as many of your colleagues continue doing so today. And they will go on prescribing these meds in the future, unless FDA follows you and many other doctors of functional medicine, but this is wishful thinking because those who think a little will understand the true intentions of this organization.

This is a question of consciousness; some people will never understand what is at stake, some others like you have noticed what is going on pretty early and therefore THREE CHEERS FOR YOU FOR THAT!

What Americans and unfortunately Europeans too should do in the first place is to scrap and smash their tv-sets – this will be the first step to sanity.

We must not forget that what happens to Medicine is only a small but important fragment of a general tendency very well steered and carried out by the power-that-be. We must all awake. The sooner, the better.

Television commercials by big pharma offend me. They are so clearly propaganda. I wish more people could see that. Fortunately, professionals like you, dear Doctor, are helping people to wake up to the real medicine of which Hippocrates spoke when he said, “Let medicine be thy food and food be thy medicine.”

Such a relief and inspiration to read your article! You are a brave psychiatrist to publish this and a strong voice for truth and transparency.
As soon as I heard about the Orlando shooting I wondered if the shooter had been taking anti-depressants or just coming off of them…
Thank you for being a voice of reason and truth!

This is such great information for those people considering antipyschotics or antidepressants. It helps them know that it is so much better to never start. The problem is for those of us who have been on these drugs for years and would like to come off of them. Trying to come off results in much worse depression and crazy feeling than before we started taking them. I know you say that some people will never be able to discontinue and that is so difficult to hear. I am a mom of 3 young children and now in perimenopause. I cant help but think the Wellbutrin I have been taking for 10 years is contributing to the mood swings and craziness of hormone hell. I tried to discontinue but it was even worse – anger and rage – so much so that I didn’t want to be around my kids because even though I didn’t physically harm them the yelling and words do damage. I know each patient is different but would love more information on some type of discontinuation protocol. I wish I lived in New York or knew of a Dr. in my area who was doing similar things as Dr. Brogan.

Withdrawal from these medications is horrible. I tried to commit suicide because of it and now my life is ruined. Unfortunately, I had a psychologist for 25 years that thought all my problems were simply psychological. He knew I had tried to get off my meds before with disastrous results but when I tried to get off them again he ignored my wishes to kill myself. Now my life is ruined because of trying withdrawal and counting on a psychologist. Now I am on horrible meds like. Clozaril and can no longer think or concentrate. I used to be a very smart, productive, energetic person. And I have a daughter who needs me.

Yesterday I visited my psychiatrist for the last time. After being on Cymbalta for over four years because of depression, regarding taking care of my ill and dying husband for several years while struggling with the aftermath of Stage 3 breast cancer, I informed her that I was weaning off Cymbalta. I told her that I haven”t been depressed for a couple of years, and was upset with myself that I stayed on it when it was not needed. She replied that I was “unusual” and that “we see things differently”. Informed her that many people have trouble with withdrawal side effects, and she said “other patients don’t respond like you”. many thanks for your enlightening book.

So good for you Marlene. Be safe and slowly tapering.. I am almost 1 year in tapering from 30 mg. Do not more the 10% pr dose.. and hold it for at least 7 to 10 days. Withdrawal often comes 1 to 2 weeks after a drop in dose. For more help… go to cymbalta hurts worse Facebook group. There are admin there that will help you make a excel sheet for tapering and lots of support and advice on how to get better. Be safe .

I think there is some generalizations being made about psychotropic medications like Seroquel and SSRI’s. Each person and circumstance will be unique. Although its important to advocate for people to be informed and practice good psychological health. Some people can see circumstances such as a tragic murder/ suicide and automatically project blame on things or systems not working. These issues are normally multi-factorial and 100% predictable behaviour in general isn’t achievable. The essence of my comment is that people get distressed and don’t know or practice caring for their emotional health before problems become overwhelming. This problem has on offshoot where your physical health monitoring/ management improves your mental health

In some ways, I agree with you, Paul, but I think you’re missing the key point: doctors have been lied to and continue to lie to us about the benefit/risk analysis of these drugs. Read the comments on this list – one person indicates that her doctor would not listen to her when she explained that she was doing better and needed to get off the drug due to side effects, and he denied withdrawal reactions exist and told her that no one else had her reactions to the drug, clearly implying that she was either mis-reporting or was some clinical oddity and that “normal” people didn’t react that way. That kind of denial of obvious facts is a sign of something deeply disturbing going on in the medical community, with doctors having an almost religious commitment to the diagnose-drug-for-life paradigm in every case, rather than approaching things on a case-by-case basis as your post suggests.

Also, it’s important to note that some people who have NEVER had any suicidal or violent preoccupations suddenly DEVELOP them when starting these drugs. For instance, pretty much every drug trial ever done screens out suicidal patients before the start of the study for safety reasons. Despite this, those taking SSRI antidepressants had more than twice the suicide rate of the general population in one review of the literature. That effect is NOT caused by “mental illness” – it’s caused by an adverse reaction to the drug. Yet how many doctors honestly discuss this fact with their patients before prescribing? Very few, as it turns out.

Doctors are not being honest with their patients and that makes it impossible for us as patients to do an accurate risk/benefit analysis and make healthy decisions. This is highly unethical and does not serve patients’ interests. It is not appropriate to blame medication side effects on the patient – doctors need to LISTEN and to adapt their approach to the patient’s needs.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the whole question of whether medical interventions are even appropriate as a first line treatment for something that has not been shown to be a physiological problem in most cases, or the question of whether nutrition, exercise and other less intrusive interventions can be equally or more helpful with considerably less risk than these dangerous drugs that are given out with so little consideration for the client’s long-term interests.

Many Mahalos Kelly. I’m re-posting on my social and letting everyone know that this post is where I stand on this medication issue. I have had personal experience with too may suicides and murder/suicide (psychatric drug related) to do anything BUT stand up and speak out.
Much love, Gina

Thank you so much for your continued activism. I work in mental health in a large hospital and I see the tragedy every day with these medications. I work to educate my patients and steer them towards healthier lifestyle. I also remind them that their depression and anxiety is a mismatch of lifestyle. Sadly some people feel they can’t give up their lifestyle and want the “magic” pill. I have had success with a number of people choosing an alternative way and I am hoping to go back to school for nutrition and neuroscience so I can speak to this great concern to them within my scope and integrity .

I was on SSRI’s for 18 years and never felt really well. I have had gut problems since birth largely because of connective tissue disorder (Ehlers Danlos Syndrome). For the last 18 months I have had no medication and have never felt better!
Kelly, your book is so encouraging. Medication can help in dire illness, I think, but not to work on gut health is sheer stupidity!
Keep on with your message.

I am told it is one of the “safer” drugs. Both my autistic children are now on this, which has been as a very last resort after trying therapies and one of them has aggression and ADHD tendencies also. The anxiety they have suffered has been life-destroying for them, really held them back (one been out of school for 17 months due to failure to cope in two consecutive mainstream schools, becoming suicidal and suffering post-traumatic stress and one is at the point of school refusing and has a panic disorder) .

There is no way to change their neurology as they will always be autistic and therefore if therapies have not worked and their lives are being severely affected by their mental health difficulties, I don’t know what else there is. The impact on the family is also enormous and it took a long, hard wait to get to the point to request medication. CAMHS were very reluctant to prescribe, so it wasn’t a case of it being pushed on us.

I don’t know what brand names you have in the USA for Sertraline but I wanted some views on it (I did research potential side-effects before they took it and so far there have been none). Particularly Kelly’s thoughts.

Ever since I have been following Dr Brogan’s blog, I’ve been agreeing with everything thats been posted. Unfortunately, I had a severe reaction to a dangerous combo of meds that has devastated me more than anything in my life….nothing else comes even close (my mom died when I was 9 and even that seemed like a walk in the park compared to this…and it most definitely wasn’t, until this happened)
I was leary of meds since at least 10 years ago and after starting a new relationship, I started feeling depressed and probably should’ve left the relationship after the first couple of months. She was a nice person but some anger/patience issues were not a good match.
I started dealing with a bit of depression not long after beginning this relationship and should have ended it not long after it began as I foolishly started taking meds for the first time in seven years.
My dr would just leave people on meds whether they worked or not and wasn’t consistant at all and this led to me being left on it too long and started getting worse. I only went back on meds because a coworker offered me some valium after I mentioned I was dealing with some depression/anxiety, the first pill gave me a headache and that shouldve been a reason to not take it but a few weeks later decided to try it again over the holidays and that was a dreadful mistake.
My dr eventually put me on valium even though at the start he refused, saying it was addictive. I had started a med I was on before instead of the valium but it was a generic version (they are not the same…at all) and it made me unknowingly worse and later my dr started me on valium and prescribed it for far too long.
I started getting ringing in my ears quite possibly after being on the valium (after reading a website) and I tapered off of it without telling anyone incl my dr. Almost three weeks after stopping it i had a panic attack and didnt realize it was from the valium stoppage and I was also reluctant to go back on it.
My dr prescribed a much shorter acting anxiety med which was a bad idea and I became very depressed and then out of the blue prescribed a dangerous combo of meds that two weeks later nearly killed me and left me with very serious damage. After two days of taking the meds I told my fiance I wanted to stop them because I was feeling sick from them and she got angry and demanded I keep taking them.
We were on vacation and I didnt need anymore silent treatment and I stupidly kept taking them and within two weeks I was rushed to the hospital except the hospital never took me seriously and left me in the back of the waiting room after being left there for four hours in a wheelchair and my muscles tightening up and starting to melt, a dr tells me to go home its a panic attack. After trying to explain that it wasnt a panic attack he refused to believe me.
I woke up the next morning with brain, muscle, nerve and kidney damage. Meds are dangerous and very sorry that I took them ever. This was a most horrifying experience